Perry questions federal rules targeting prison rape

Updated 10:34 am, Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Gov. Rick Perry says Texas will not comply a law designed to curb prison rapes.

Gov. Rick Perry says Texas will not comply a law designed to curb prison rapes.

Photo: Austin American-Statesman

Perry questions federal rules targeting prison rape

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AUSTIN — In his latest pushback against Washington mandates, Gov. Rick Perry is defiantly warning federal officials that Texas will not comply with a law designed to curb prison rapes — a statute signed into law when his predecessor, George W. Bush, was president.

In a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Perry accused the Obama administration of enacting rules for the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) of 2003 that Texas cannot afford to implement.

While failure to comply with the federal law carries a possible criminal penalty, state and federal officials said Monday they did not expect it to be enforced against Perry or Texas. Instead, federal officials said they expect that additional discussions will be undertaken to resolve the issues noted by Perry — ones they said have been by other states, as well.

The rules have been in the process of being developed for several years.

“Washington has taken an opportunity to help address a problem in our prisons and jails, but instead created a counterproductive and unnecessarily cumbersome regulatory mess for the states,” Perry stated in the three-page letter dated Friday. “Absent standards that acknowledge the operational realities of our prisons and jails, I will not sign your form (certifying compliance with the act) and I will encourage my fellow governors to follow suit.”

The new rules prohibit most cross-gender viewing, and because roughly 40 percent of Texas prison guards are women, it would be impossible to properly staff the state's 109 state prisons. A proposal by federal consultants to remove some security cameras in prisons and obstructing lines of sight “is ridiculous” and would be unsafe, Perry said

The new rules prohibit housing 17-year-olds, the age of being an adult in terms of criminal responsibility in Texas, with 18-year-olds, the age of majority in most states. “PREA sight and sound separation standards would require Texas to separate 17-year old adult inmates from 18-year old adult inmates at substantial cost with no discernible benefit to the state or its inmates,” he said.

The new also increases staffing requirements in some lockups. Separating prisoners would require additional lockups and staffing — as many as 30 additional officers at one county jail, Perry said. While the new ratios might be ideal in some lockups, “the decision of what constitutes appropriate staff ratios should be left to each state and to those professionals with operational knowledge,” he said in the letter to Holder.

Prison officials said Monday that reported sexual assaults have declined by about 10 percent in the past two years, after a Safe Prisons program implemented in 2001 forced operational changes that have reduced attacks even further.

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“The agency has a zero tolerance policy against sexual violence within the system,” said Jason Clark, a prison system spokesman.

“The Texas Department of Criminal Justice is compliant with most PREA standards. However, the standard relating to cross gender supervision would have a substantial operational impact on the agency. Approximately 40 percent of the correctional officer workforce is female, and privacy restrictions affecting the viewing of male offenders would limit their ability to provide adequate security.”